December 10, 2011


Improved Lighting Reading Series
presents

An Evening with Birds, LLC

poetry readings by
Justin Marks
Emily Pettit
Sampson Starkweather
Paige Taggart
Chris Tonelli

plus music by
Zack Wait

Saturday, December 10, 7pm
Nightbird Books
205 West Dickson Street
Fayetteville, Arkansas
FREE!

Improved Lighting Reading Series hosts monthly readings, mostly poetry and mostly Saturdays, with occasional musical acts, at Nightbird Books.  Free admission.  Authors books available for purchase through the bookstore.  Curated by Roger Barrett, Kaveh Bassiri, and Matthew Henriksen.  Visit us at improvedlighting.blogspot.com.  Contact improvedlighting@gmail.com.

Justin Marks’ first full-length book is A Million in Prizes (New Issues, 2009). He is also the author of several chapbooks, the most recent being On Happier Lawns (Poor Claudia, 2011). A founding editor of Birds, LLC, he lives in Queens, NY with his wife and their twin son and daughter. 

Emily Pettit is the author of two chapbooks How (Octopus Books) and What Happened to Limbo (Pilot Books). GOAT IN THE SNOW (Birds LLC) is her first full-length book. She is an editor for notnostrums and Factory Hollow Press and jubilat. She teaches poetry at Flying Object.

Sampson Starkweather is the author of Self Help Poems, The Heart is Green from So Much Waiting, City of Moths and The Photograph. He played professional soccer in New Zealand and was an editor of physics and chemistry books, currently he is the Publications Coordinator at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, you can read recent work here. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and he be a Bird. 

Paige Taggart was born and lived in Northern California for 25 years, she’s been living in Brooklyn the past 5 years. Her chapbook DIGITAL MACRAMÉ was released by Poor Claudia (Feb 2011), and Polaroid Parade from Greying Ghost Press (July 2011). The Ice Poems are forthcoming with DoubleCross Press. She was a 2009 recipient of the New York Foundation of the Art's grant. Be on the lookout for her poems forthcoming in Jubilat, Sentence, No Dear and Spinning Jenny. Check out her jewelry wares: mactaggartjewelry.blogspot.com

Chris Tonelli is one of the founding editors of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press. He also founded and curates the So and So Series and edits the So and So Magazine. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press), and his first full-length collection is The Trees Around. New work can be found in the upcoming issues of The Laurel Review and Fou. He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison and their son Miles. 

Zack Wait sings and plays guitar in Fayetteville rock bands Fauxnz, Egyptr, and Wthr Wpns. He’ll be performing a small selection of new and old covers; Trrrsm Singers accompanying.

November 12, 2011

Improved Lighting Reading Series
presents

poetry readings by
Chris Martin
Mary Austin Speaker
& four poets from Bloof Books,  Shanna Compton, Peter Davis, Sandra Simonds & Maureen Thorson

plus music by
Brian Abel

Saturday, November 12, 7:30 pm
Nightbird Books (in the BHK Kafe)
205 West Dickson Street
Fayetteville, Arkansas
FREE!
We no longer operate on hipster time, so expect the reading to start exactly at 7:30.

Improved Lighting Reading Series hosts monthly readings, mostly poetry and mostly Saturdays, with occasional musical acts, at Nightbird Books in the BHK Kafe.  Free admission.  Full coffee/wine/beer bar and food available in the cafĂ© and authors’ books available for purchase through the bookstore.  Curated by Roger Barrett, Kaveh Bassiri, and Matthew Henriksen.  Visit us at improvedlighting.blogspot.com.  Contact improvedlighting@gmail.com.

Shanna Compton’s books include Down Spooky(Winnow, 2005), For Girls & Others (Bloof, 2008), andGamers (Soft Skull, 2004), and the chapbooks Rare Vagrants (Dusie, 2010), Scurrilous Toy (Dusie, 2007), and others. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, Verse, McSweeney’s, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, the Poetry Foundation’s website, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a new poetry collection called The Blank Verge, forthcoming from Bloof Books in Spring 2012, with excerpts appearing in the Awl, Court Green, Women's Studies Quarterly, Eoagh, and other journals. She lives on the internet at shannacompton.com.

Peter Davis writes, draws, and makes music in Muncie, Indiana, with his sweet kids and sweet wife. His first book of poetry is Hitler’s Mustache (2007), and he edited Poet’s Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets on Books That Shaped Their Art (2005) and coedited Poet’s Bookshelf II (2008) with Tom Koontz, all from Barnwood Press. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry series and recent work may be found in Lamination Colony, Everyday Genius, Jacket, No Tell Motel, and elsewhere. He teaches English at Ball State University. More, including his music project, Short Hand, at artisnecessary.com. His third poetry collection, Tina, is forthcoming from Bloof Books.

Chris Martin is the author of Becoming Weather (Coffee House 2011) and American Music (Copper Canyon 2007).  He is also the author of several chapbooks, including How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem (Brave Men 2011) and the forthcoming Enough (Ugly Duckling 2012).  He is an editor at Futurepoem books and curates the response blog Futurepost from the oldest house in Iowa City.

Sandra Simonds grew up in Los Angeles, California. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and Creative Writing at U.C.L.A and an M.F.A. from the University of Montana, where she received a poetry fellowship. In 2010, she earned a PhD in Literature with an emphasis in Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her second full-length collection of poems, Mother was a Tragic Girl, will be published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2012. She is the author of Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008), which was a finalist for numerous prizes including the National Poetry Series; she is also the author of several chapbooks including Used White Wife (Grey Book Press, 2009), and The Humble Travelogues of Mr. Ian Worthington, Written from Land & Sea (Cy Gist, 2006). Her poems have been published in many  journals such asPoetry, the Believer, the Colorado Review, Fence, theColumbia Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Volt, the New Orleans Review, and Lana Turner. Her Creative Nonfiction has been published in Post Road and other literary journals. She currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida and is an Assistant Professor of English at Thomas University in beautiful, rural Southern Georgia.

Mary Austin Speaker is the author of the chapbooks The Bridge (Push Press), In the End There Were Thousands of Cowboys, and Abandoning the Firmament (Menagerie Editions). New work will appear in Mrs. Maybe and Boog City Reader, and has recently appeared in Pleiades, Big Bell, Boston Review, 20012, Iowa Review, New Orleans Review and elsewhere. She teaches writing and works as a freelance book designer in Iowa City, IA, where she lives with her husband, poet Chris Martin.

Maureen Thorson is a poet, publisher, and book designer living in Washington, D.C. She is the author of the new book Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling, 2010), and a number of chapbooks, including Twenty Questions for the Drunken Sailor (2009), Mayport (2006), which won the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Fellowship, and Novelty Act (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004). Her poems can be found in many anthologies and journals, including the forthcoming Yale Anthology of Younger American Poets, Exquisite Corpse, Hotel Amerika, LIT, The Hat, and6×6. Maureen is the publisher and editor of Big Game Books, a small press dedicated to emerging poets. She is also the co-curator of the In Your Ear reading series at the DC Arts Center and the founder of NaPoWriMo, an annual project in which poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month of April.